Leena El-Sadek selected to attend Clinton Global Initiative University meeting

The Clinton Global Initiative addresses social challenges and each year hosts Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU), bringing students together with experts and thought leaders for a multi-day meeting.  Senior Leena El-Sadek will join more than a thousand college students attending this year’s meeting at the University of Miami on March 6-8.

Students from colleges all over the country are invited to submit applications that include a “commitment to action” outlining a project the student will start up to combat a global problem. El-Sadek is an alumna of DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted, and helps manage the Supporting Women’s Action (SuWA) organization, housed in the Kenan Institute for Ethics, uniting Duke students with local female refugees. Sadek’s proposal would create “Conflict Cookbook,” compiling recipes and personal narratives of refugee women who have fled conflict areas. It is meant to facilitate relationships, combat stereotypes, and showcase the skills of a marginalized group within America. Only a handful of the “commitment to action” proposals are selected for funding, and El-Sadek is a semi-finalist. Additionally, her proposal is one of only two which have been selected for presentation within a session.

El-Sadek is eager for the opportunity to engage with students from around the world, and share her experiences with the SuWA program, adding: “What I’m really excited about is the one-on-one conversations I hope to have with the students from the UK, or from Nepal, or California, who are all working on similar refugee issues. Though we’re miles — and oceans — apart, we’re bridging ideas and projects in hopes of moving our communities and our world forward.”